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blackmilshake · 7 years

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Misunderstandings *Harry Styles

Six months had gone by since you and Harry broke up. More like he broke up with you.

***

You had met up with your childhood male friend since he was visiting the city for the first time due to some business.

You had made some time in your schedule to show him the city because you were so happy to see him after like seven years, so when he invited you and your boyfriend to his wedding you were more than proud of him. A successful businessman, soon-to-be married.

Sadly that time you used with your old friend had cut down the time you would talk to Harry.

For a whole week you had barely communicated with him.

Little did you know you had a paparazzi behind your back all week.

It was a Friday when the article was realized. "HARRY STYLES' GIRLFRIEND MORE LIKE AN EX" with tons of pictures of you and your old friend around the city, smiling, laughing and eating in different places.

Also a video was shown of you two laughing non stop.

There were even a couple of photoshopped pictures of you two kissing and holding hands that looked so fake you couldn't believe people thought they were original.

It was all over the freaking news and on every gossip channel.

Anxiety grew inside you.

Before leaving for promo harry had offered to take you with him but you had to decline his offer, you were still studying, close to the finals and needed time to study since it was your last period in college. Of course, you not going had leaded to a small fight right before he left. And now everything sounded out of context. "She doesn't go with her boyfriend for promo so she stays with her little affair." "Maybe they broke up long ago, that's why she isn't with him." "If I had the chance to date such a hot male I wouldn't cheat on him."

Anger built up inside of you.

"You don't know a thing." You screamed due to all the rage you had.

Utter bullshit.

You turned off the tv and went for your cellphone, you needed to talk to Harry just to clear things.

Harry was doing promo at the other side of the world at the moment.

Apparently you had sleep while the whole world freaked out over something so fake.

Your cellphone soon collapsed owing to Twitter and Instagram notifications that arrived non stop, you weren't even given the chance to turn off your data before your cellphone turned off itself.

Death treats, hate and more hate was all you could see on the tv, your now dead cellphone, computer and soon the threats reached your telephone so you had to disconnect that too.

Tears fell down your face and you wished more than anything to have Harry right next to you, embracing him, while listening to his soothing words and caring spirit.

You just wished he hadn't believed all that crap that was being said about you.

You thought about leaving your flat but saw tons of paps and Harry's fans on the street, waiting for you to come out.

You wanted to go to your best friend's flat but you were sure they'd eat you alive outside.

Fear was all over your system.

You hated this part of Harry's life, although you knew what you signed for when you accepted to be with him, death threats, hate and constant stalking. He came along with that whole package.

When you heard strong and insistent knocks on your door you stood froze.

If they all came in, there was no way out. You'd be trapped.

Sobs left your mouth as your trembling figure stood there, like a deer caught in the lights.

Then you heard his oh-so-familiar voice.

"IT IS HARRY. OPEN RIGHT NOW!"

Even when his voice was too loud you opened immediately and threw yourself at his arms– or that's what you had in mind but he stopped you in mid-tracks, pushing you as if you were some sort of venom. It had taken you by surprise.

"Don't fucking touch me." He spat with so much rage. You had never ever seen him this mad.

He had believed their words.

He had written you text messages all week, only to be answered hours later. You didn't got his FaceTime calls, nor the normal ones. He thought the reason behind that was because you were studying very hard so he let you be for a while.

You didn't really tell him about a male friend coming over because he was kind of jealous and things were a little tight since the fight so you had let him think that it was a female friend.

Big mistake.

But when he turned on the tv and saw the pictures of you and a man, giggling, eating and having the time of your lives all the blood inside him boiled.

When the pictures of you and that guy kissing were shown he lost his shit in a mixture of jealousy, anger and impotence.

He took the first flight available to you. He needed an explanation.

But he hadn't read your messages, telling him how you caught up with a male friend and how he was also invited to his wedding right after your friend left your house and invited you to his wedding.

The flight had calmed him a little but the paps outside the airport and your building had gotten the best of him to a point were he was held back by his bodyguard so he wouldn't punch a pap in the face that had dared to call you names.

Now he was at your doorstep, his thoughts filled with the rumors that were everywhere and the harsh words of paparazzis outside your place. How could so many people be wrong? He had thought even when he, himself had tasted several times how those things worked.

His eyes were red and puffy, his face pale with dark bags under his eyes.

His broad back rigid and his muscles tensed up, making the veins on his forehead and neck surface, knuckles white.

He was definitely mad, and that made you take a step backwards.

You had never seen him this mad over anything.

"Harry... you can't possibly believe what they are saying."

"Then explain, because there are fucking pictures and videos EVERYWHERE, was him your fucking FEMALE FRIEND?" he roared and you wanted so bad to shout him back but deeply you knew it was your fault, for lying. He hated when people lied to him and you knew it.

"Harry... calm down, please come in."

His eyes had narrowed at you. "I'm fine here, explain now because trust me I am trying to be fucking calmed."

His mind itself was too loud to think rationally. His own thoughts haunting him. His past ghost coming back to him.

He was never lucky with girls, even when he was that famous and loved by millions, he always chose the ones that used him for his money or fame and you had seemed so different. Now the world was trying to show him wrong.

But he claimed blame too. He was always so absent. He barely saw you, a relationship with him is like dating a phone. Calls, messages, even emails. And you were too perfect for him. Selfless, thoughtful, kind, sweet and loved by literally everyone on his close circle of family and friends. Anyone worth your attention could be considered gifted.

He just couldn't believe it when he saw those rumors.

So there he was, shouting for an explanation that he could trust, one that could stop him, he didn't want to end things with you... but this was too much. Too much pressure on his back. The whole world was expecting him to be perfect.

But you were speechless, stammering at his cold, fuming and distant demeanor.

You were never good with pressure and his eyes where so intimidating.

Then you took a deep breath and tried to control your heartbeat, steady thoughts and shaking hands.

"Harry, he's just a friend. It's not what it looks like and..."

"Why did you lie to me? What did you say your male friend was a she?"

He was trying so hard not to break.

"I thought you would get jealous so I didn't tell you, I know it's my..."

In a matter of seconds he lost it.

"DO NOT TRY TO FUCKING PUT THE BLAME ON ME!"

"Harry, he's about to get married." You said anxiously and his mouth was faster than his mind.

"So he came all the way here to be pleased by his favorite hoe?!"

And your hand faster than you will. Hurt taking over your body.

You slapped him right in the face, but his words hurt you a thousand times more than the burn in your hand.

His eyes became almost black in anger and his usually respectful self was blinded with rage. He raised up hand and you tried to cover yourself from what you thought was a slap but he stopped in mid track, completely scared of himself as he watched you flinch in fear.

It took both of you a couple of seconds to realize what was going on.

And then he talked again. Still too afraid of what had come to him, his voice breaking in the process.

"I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. We're through. Don't look for me, don't call, don't text. Cause for me you no longer exist."

You closed your eyes as you felt your heart breaking, hearing how your worst nightmare became your reality, your knees giving up as the door closed right in your face.

***

Now you were drinking at a pub near your best friend flat since she was tired of trying to go out and have fun with you and pretty much made you go with her. You had never gotten drunk before your breakup with Harry and now you were gulping the drink in your hands as if it was water. Yeah it burned, but it was making you forget.

Also you had never really danced in public being your shy self- something that had made Harry fall even more, nor were you used to having eyes on you. Usually everyone's eyes would be on your now ex boyfriend or your hot best friend, but she had managed to fit you into a tight little black dress and crazy heels and some extra make up in order to "celebrate your first job as a graduated woman" and while being sober you almost had a panic attack feeling the eyes of some males in the pub, now with each glass of alcohol in your system you barely noticed a person standing in front of you.

Yeah, you were drinking fast but surprisingly were still able to stand up and your friend wanted you to dance before you couldn't even talk, so when your new favorite song came on she took the change to try to make you dance. Thing that she hadn't achieved since you know her.

"HEY! IT'S SLOW HANDS. YOUR FAV. COME ON."

She literally drags you to the dance floor.

Harry himself was miserable without you. You used to be his sunshine, his voice, soul and heart, his air. Without you he was like a zombie walking around. He had tried his best to move on for his fans but his heart always carried a dark shadow he couldn't remove. The space you had left.

He couldn't forgive himself for breaking up with you, when your female best friend called him, screaming for breaking your heart when you had done nothing, hanging up after a talk that had left him in pure shame. He was ashamed of himself.

And you did as he asked. You never called, messaged or contacted him. In fact you changed your phone number, deleted your account on every social media. Your best friend had noticed how you would want to call him from her phone so she had to delete him too, block him on all the accounts he followed her and she even rented your flat to have another income and moved you with her.

When he had realized how much he needed you, you were off the map. You weren't in college anymore, no address, no phone, not working anymore in the library you used to.

He was in the same town you live, and he felt so empty when he tried to go to your flat only to find someone else living there. In a place where you two had made amazing memories that still haunted him.

He started to walk aimlessly, not really caring about where he would end up that night. A pub around the corner where he was almost called his name, his legs felt numb already, his mouth dry and his knees almost giving up. He had been on his feet all day.

He showed his pretty face to the guard in the entrance and was immediately welcomed, avoiding the long line as he was used to.

Inside, everything was a mess, as usual.

People drunk, high and making out on every corner, couch and stair they would found. His thoughts mixed with the loud music. He sat down in one of the empty chairs near the bartender, ordering "the strongest one you have, double" and started to eye his surroundings.

He saw a woman that looked so much to you and he couldn't help but stare at her. She was bitting her lip the way you used to, for a second he thought it was you but he wasn't sure, he could only see the side of that woman.

His drink arrived and he drank it in two sips, ordering another one.

His eyes back to the woman that looked so much to his love.

It was not until you stood up that he noticed that it was actually you. His first instinct was to run up to where you were but he stopped himself, you had suffered enough.

He couldn't help but notice how much you had changed. You had definitely lost weight and that made his heart sink to the bottoms of his stomach. Were you not eating enough? Were you sick? Were you ok?

His heart skipped a beat when he saw you stumbling a little, obviously drunk. And fought the urge to come to you and help you. Take you with him and apologize till he wins you back. But he remembered your best friends words "You told her that she was fucking dead to you, now you are fucking dead to her, ass."

He had never seen you drinking more than needed, let alone drunk. And he wondered when you had picked up that habit. Was it because of him? He was hoping a no for an answer, he would never forgive himself.

He was looking for a companion too, to see if you had come with someone but he could only see your best friend and felt nothing but relieve, as selfish as it sounded.

Then his second drink arrived but he didn't drink it and asked for water and something to eat instead. He wanted to see you, even if it was from afar. And of course he wanted to protect you from any dork around.

He was definitely jealous of that dress you had on because it was caressing your soft skin even though it was too short for his liking. His eyes went to your shoes, also too high for his liking, you could fall and hurt yourself. But other side of this mind was punishing him. You looked so damn hot, he felt his little friend so happy, and not just at the thought of you at a wet dream of his, but your walking self.

You stood there for a second, your mind still working a little, you had never danced in front of anyone, you saw your best friend shaking her hips and you stood there not knowing how to move, you had only done it when no one was watching, taking a shower of while being alone. As soon as she saw you paralyzed, she took your hands and started moving them. She shouted "Close your eyes and feel it!" You did as ordered.

He saw your first dance moves, a little awkward but definitely cute, he felt like a proud father seeing his child on a dance. A little smile crept into his strong features. He saw the way your eyes closed and how your hips started to move slowly.

Soon your moves changed from cute to absolute sexy . Your arms were no longer awkwardly hanging to your sides, they were fully up, touching yourself, each other arm first, then your hair, your neck and going down, like if you were giving yourself the pleasure no one else was giving you.

He was watching you such an intensity that he didn't noticed that other men started to notice you too nor the girls next to him trying to catch his attention.

You were definitely feeling every melody of the song and your hands wandered all over your body, your eyes closed, happy that you had finally forgotten-even for a second- the grieve inside you.

Before the song was over, you felt two strong arms around you, your back against someone's chest, his hands in your hips moving you along. During any other situation you would have ran out but now you were too numb to. Now the alcohol had made its work, you even pictured Harry being the one holding you.

"You look so hot, baby" his voice was deep and you felt something hard pressed against your back but you did not care.

Then his hands made his way up to your dress, finding his way up to your inner tights, making you moan, his other hand making its way to your chest and his mouth whispering in your ear things you couldn't get because of the loud music. A wet kiss between each word, and very deep in your mind you knew where it was leading.

But Harry's vision was interrupted before that had man approached you, by a kiss of a woman that had the guts to stand in front of him and put her hand on the boner he had and didn't even knew about, one that started to hurt in the tight space of his black skinny jeans. Of course seeing you had his effects on his friend too.

He politely pushed her aside and told her that he was with someone else, she pouted and walked away after several minutes.

He looked for you but couldn't find you.

"Fuck." He muttered and stood up, feeling how his soul abandoned him. You could be at danger right now he thought and wanted to knock himself out for not taking enough care of you, for not taking you home with him when he first saw you. He started to run, looking for your face, hair, something. Anything.

You were being pleased in ways you hadn't in what now seemed such a long time.

His hands were still all over you, lifting your dress more and more. He left kisses all the way up your neck and you pictured Harry doing that to you, when you looked at his face noticed that he was definitely not Harry so you tried to get away from him but he held you tighter. You looked for your best friend but she was no where to be seen. "You won't go anywhere, baby."

You were about to make a tantrum. You. Wanted. Harry.

"LET ME GO!!"

Harry heard your voice screaming even with the loud music. He could recognize your voice anywhere.

When he saw a man trying to take you by force, something inside him was born, something he had never felt. A mixture of jealousy, anger, fear and protectiveness. For the first time ever he wanted to kill someone with his bare hands.

He practically ran to where you were and tapped the man's shoulder, only to punch him with all his strength right in the nose, and eye twice, making him fall, almost taking you with him. But Harry caught you fast enough. You took a glimpse at your savior only to be greeted by Harry and your heart skipped a beat, still too drunk to know what was really going on.

His eyes were still focused on the man with bloody nose and swallowed eye. "WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM DUDE? I WAS DANCING."

"She fucking said let go, dude. Now go away before I fucking kill you for touching my girl" Harry spat, with utter hate in his eyes. Then turned back to you but didn't really looked at you. He took your arm in his hand with a tight grip and headed out the club. Once you were out he dialed someone on his phone, what you understood was his bodyguard. Then you started to giggle, finding funny the thought of a tall man in his pijamas heading to drive another man and a drunk woman. But that was what uber did, huh? Just not in pijamas.

Harry glanced at you, still too shaken at what had happened inside. His hands shaking. What if he hadn't been there? What if..? He didn't even wanted to think about it. His chest burned.

"You look so funny pacing around." You fully laughed at your own joke.

Harry felt his heartbeat race up again at the sound of your laugh. A laugh he had missed so much.

Oh the effects you had on him. One second ready to kill someone and the next one smiling at your laugh.

Then you stopped your laughs and looked at him serious.

"Are you really my Harry or am I imagining you again?"

He felt something in his guts. Probably guilt. But he had imagined you too, endless times.

"I am your Harry, kitten." He said, full of love and care, looking straight at your eyes while you smiled happy at him, happy to hear that nickname again. Then the smile disappeared.

"I feel dizzy, Harry." You pouted.

He took your hand and noticed how cold it was, something that always happened when you were sick.

"Want to throw up, love?" You nodded, too dizzy.

He guided you to a bin, took your hair in his hand and the other one keeping you from falling as you emptied your stomach.

"That was not nice." You hiccuped.

"You'll see what's nice with the hangover that waits for you." He shook his head, already taking note to give you water and some pills as soon as you get home.

A black Range Rover pulled over and who you assumed, was one of Harry's body guards, smiling at the scene, opening the door.

"Good night Henry, please to my place."

Henry nodded, kind of happy to see that you were with his boss again after all the lonely rides to bars and studios.

Harry was still worried at you. How many alcohol had you put in your system? Had you eaten before getting that wasted?

"Harry..." you said, lifting your hand to the furrow in his forehead.

He drove his attention back to you.

"Yes, pet?"

"I missed you."

He didn't want your words to get to him as hard as they did. He felt his own tears building in the back of his eyes. He inhaled deeply, remembering all the nights he had spent alone, his phone in his hand, waiting for you to say those words.

"I missed you too."

You nodded again, to sleepy to generate another thought.

You let yourself sleep on his lap, his hands making their way to your soft hair and skin.

He took off your shoes and the pins you had on your hair.

How hurtful these must be, he had thought.

Soon you arrived to his flat. One he had bought just to be near you and hadn't used in so long so and as sorry as he was for having Henry running errands at three in the morning, he asked for him to buy you some food for the morning, and to pick up your best friend, drive her to her flat and bring some of your clothes.

He had carried you in his arms all the way up to his bedroom, left you asleep in his bed and went to the kitchens to grab some bread, water and the pills you'd need for that hangover only to find you sat up on the edge of the bed, smiling at him.

His heart skipped at beat at that smile. It had the power to make him weak at his knees.

He cleared his throat before talking.

"Y. You... You should eat this bread and drink this. So you won't feel so bad in the morning."

You still thought it was a dream of yours. You had already lost hope about getting back together with Harry, he was very clear. You were dead to him. So having him taking care of you must be a dream.

You did as he asked, ate the piece of bread quickly and gulped the pill he had in his hands, feeling goosebumps at the touch of your hands, your heart beating faster and your stomach turning nicely.

You saw his eyes, he had felt it too, the energy.

You slowly got closer and closer, till your nose was touching his, moving your face side to side, just like you would always do.

His breath was irregular, heavier, his hands sweaty. Only you had the power to make him that nervous.

After what seemed like ages to him, your lips touched and moved in sync, perfectly made for each other.

You started to push him to bed, desperate to get as much of him as you could before you woke up from what you thought was a dream.

But he pushed you back. He was so much sobered. He couldn't do this.

Disrespect you in that way. He would never take advantage of your drunk state. If something was happening between the two of you, you had to be conscious.

You pouted as tears started to fall down your face, until you were sobbing uncontrollably in a matter of seconds.

Harry didn't really knew what to do. You were so complicated while drunk. He was more like a clingy toddler, but you, you were a wreck of everything.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't cry kitten! What's wrong?"

"Not even in my dreams I can get you to love me back. I don't like this dream anymore."

He was well aware of your drunken state but your words still burned.

"I love you to pieces, so much I can't even describe with words. I don't want to take advantage of you while drunk. If we are going to fix things you have to be sober and not thinking that it's a dream. Let's shower you so you can feel better."

He walked to his closet, took your underwear, the one you had left in case you wanted to stay at night while you were still together, and of course one of this shirts as a pijama.

Then he left it on the bathroom and went back for you.

"Can you please help me with my dress?" Your voice was low and insecure. Your mind too fast and dizzy at the same time.

He almost regretted offering you a shower as he felt the skin of your back under his fingers while unzipping the delicate material, taking it off your body without really being able to touch you.

You stood there, only with your underwear, ironically feeling completely naked in front of him.

He took your hand and guided you to the shower, with water cold enough to sober you up but not could enough to make you sick.

His eyes wandered all over your body, wet and delicate. Your eyes wide open and your lips slightly opened.

Oh, he was feeling like in a dream, but at the same time so alive again.

"Take this underwear, I'm gonna close the door so you can change, 'k?"

"Don't go, please"

He closed his eyes. Why did you have to do this to him?

"Then I'm just closing my eyes."

It took you a couple of minutes to put on the new clothes.

He silently took you to his bed and lied down next to you. A huge part of him was thinking about giving you more privacy and leave the room to yourself.

But what if you only wanted him by your side kind of drunk?

But he didn't knew you were now sobered up, and wanted to be with him, feel his heartbeat against you, his scent, his warm body.

What if in the morning you woke up hating him?

So he hold you tight, your head in his bare chest, your legs in between his, your ear close to were his heart beat faster than ever, watching you fall asleep as soon as he finished singing a song he didn't even know he was singing.

And he watched you all night, the way your breath was so calm, the moonlight touching you with delicacy. And everything was back to normal, you lying next to him, his hands sticky, heart pounding fast and butterflies on his stomach like crazy. But he felt home, and it was such a marvelous feeling, after feeling lost for so long.

He realized how much you really meant to him, how much you still mean to him.

And there was no thing on earth that would make him give up on you again.

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kidsviral-blog · 6 years

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How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-i-learned-to-be-ok-with-feeling-sad/

How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad

It wasn’t easy, or cheap.

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

The first time I didn’t feel sad about feeling sad was on Sept. 17, 2013. I was in my therapist’s office. More specifically, I was lying on a table, faceup, in my therapist’s office. Maybe it sounds simple, but it was a trick I’d spent years practicing and trying to learn.

I do not mean that I take sadness lightly. Four and a half years ago, after a work-related immersion in sexual violence, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Subsequently, I was diagnosed with comorbid major depressive disorder. Comorbid to all that, I was diagnosed as alcoholic and suicidal. More than $20,000 worth of treatment later, I am no longer those things, but, as an evaluating psychiatrist put it in a report last year, I have “chronic,” “recurring,” “residual psychiatric symptoms” serious enough that she ruled me permanently disabled. I’ve been an emotional gal since always — “She has a lot of feelings,” my best grad-school friend would chuckle by way of explanation when I got worked up about some topic or other in front of strangers — and my emotions now are enormous. Frustration over a failed attempt to buy a sold-out rug online ends in so much yelling and foot-stomping that my neighbors complain. The intensity of a pop song lands like a blunt punch to my chest and explodes any grief nestling there; the very day I’m writing this, Nicki Minaj made me cry in my car.

Sincerely: I do not take sadness lightly. But after a lot of retraining, I do take it wholly, life-alteringly differently than I was raised to, and than almost anyone else I know. Now, sometimes when I’m not sad and I think about sadness, that thought is accompanied by this startling one: I miss it.

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

Pre-therapy, this is the only thing I was ever taught, implicitly and explicitly, about sadness: It is bad.

You do not want it. If you’ve got it, you should definitely try to get rid of it, fast as possible. Whatever you do, don’t subject other people to it, because they do not like that.

Sadness can be legitimately problematic, absolutely. If your sadness comes from seemingly no place or even an obvious place but keeps you from participating in life or enjoying anything and refuses to abate no matter how long you go on letting it express itself, you of course can’t keep living like that. But culturally, we aren’t allowed to be sad even for a little while. Even when it’s perfectly sensible. Even when, sometimes, we need it.

This is reflected in our entertainment. Watching Bridesmaids, I shake my head over how Melissa McCarthy slaps Kristen Wiig around and tells her to stop being sad, though she has recently lost her job, her savings, her home, and her best friend. (Miraculously, this solves Kristen Wiig’s attitude problem.) In the third episode of MasterChef Junior‘s second season, judge Joe Bastianich tells a contestant who has ruined her shepherd’s pie and possibly her dream of winning, the biggest dream she’s had up to this point in her life, “When things are as bad as they can be, you gotta pull it together. Wipe your tears.”

The contestant has been crying for mere seconds. She is 8 years old.

What does it say about our relationship to sadness that Joan Didion — who we can all agree is a pretty smart, educated, and worldly cookie — had to write an entire book about trying to learn how to grieve? This ethos was fine for me when mostly nothing bad happened and if it did, the accompanying sadness didn’t linger for too long. But post-trauma, it turned out to be a massive impediment to my recovery.

I had a lot of symptoms. They all alarmed me, but equally so the most straightforward one: sadness. Sometimes I cried from uncontrollable, overwhelming, life-swallowing sadness. And all the time, the sadness and crying itself freaked me the fuck out. I would start crying, and then immediately hate myself. Why was I crying? Why couldn’t I get this sadness to go away? What was wrong with me?

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I got into therapy. I’d gone before, casually and occasionally, for support with some huge changes — a new city and new job and fresh divorce years earlier. Now, it was a therapy emergency. I considered myself decently good at self-care in general, but sure, I let it slip when I got too busy, when work was too demanding, when there were things I had to do that I knew I was getting too burned out to but did anyway. But taking care of myself was not optional anymore. As a matter of survival, I had to make as much room for it as it needed.

And so, I started intensive treatment — during which my therapist had to spend incalculable amounts of time trying to convince me that it was OK to be sad. The alarm I experienced over my sadness was another terrible feeling on top of my already terrible symptoms. The energy I spent panicking that I was sad could have been better spent on coping with the sadness. It was true that I — like many people, people with clinically depressed, never-ending, or life-threatening sadness — needed a lot more assistance than just a big philosophical hug, but if I could accept sadness, my therapist kept suggesting, I would be able to experience it (long and hard as that may go on) and then it could pass. The alternative — being sad, plus condemning yourself for being sad — only heightens the suffering. And, likely, the time it lasts.

“Sadness is a legitimate emotion,” my therapist would say. “There is an acceptance you can get to with it where it’s just a sensation, and without judgment, that sensation can be exquisite.”

“LIES,” I responded to this sometimes. Sometimes I called her a hippie. Nobody accepts sadness. Everybody knows that crying girls are silly and weak. Hysterical, and overdramatic.

But as much as I didn’t — I couldn’t! — really believe her, I still really wanted to learn how to do that.

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Alice Mongkongllite / BuzzFeed

I can’t explain, in a tight little essay, how I finally did it. It would take an entire book for me to describe how I got even most of the way there. I can sum up that it took three years to the DAY after the events that started my symptoms, and that it cost a lot of money, and time, and time off, which cost more money, and was so painful that the very memory of how painful it was sometimes makes me need to go lie down in my bed. I can point out that most people are not given the opportunity to go through this process, even if they desperately want to. Unfortunately, healing is a luxury in our society, not a right; so many who could benefit from treatment simply can’t.

And I can tell you about the moment, that September. It was sunny and in the 60s. I was in my therapist’s office in San Francisco, which had fairly bare walls, industrial carpet, and windows that let the light in. I was lying on a massage therapist’s table, because that was normal in my somatic therapy; the treatment addressed the physicality of one’s symptoms, the places and ways trauma lived in one’s body (last year, a hero of my therapist’s, the very brilliant Bessel van der Kolk, released a book about this called The Body Keeps the Score), which was often explored with eyes closed, lying down. The first umpteen number of times I got on the table and was prompted to breathe, to feel into where my tensions and disconnections were, I resisted the falling apart this awareness and reconnecting could lead to. I feared starting to cry and never stopping. I feared never being able to put myself back together, ever, sometimes metaphorically but sometimes literally writhing and kicking and screaming with my resistance to just relaxing. Feeling. To be clear: Sadness was far from my only issue. But by Sept. 17, 2013 (around which point my insurance tallied it had so far given my therapist $18,000), I was taking feeling it in much better stride.

“How do you feel?” my therapist asked.

“Sad,” I said. I was extra sad that day because I was in the middle of a no-fault eviction, and it was turning out not to be practical or affordable to stay in the Bay Area, where I’d lived for a long time. “I feel sad because we have to move.” I cried as I talked about this. I loved California. “I have to grieve a state.”

I cried harder. “It’s a bummer.”

My therapist was very calm. “That is a bummer,” she agreed in soothing tones. She told me to open my eyes and when I did, asked me what sensation I noticed. Instantly, I pictured a kid lying in a yard.

That’s me right now, I thought. A kid lying in a yard, feeling sad — but not feeling sad about feeling sad. It was what it was. It was fine. It was a peace. Me, or a kid, being just what she was: alive.

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“I’m not bummed out about feeling bummed out,” I said.

The significance of this moment was clear to us both. My therapist was speechless for a second. Then she smiled — we were often smiling, because we joked through even the hardest and ugliest moments together — and said, “People pay a lot of money for that, Mac.”

“They should!”

They shouldn’t have to. I hadn’t panicked over being sad every time it had happened in my life, say over a breakup, but I had never had that level of acceptance of it, peace-spreading, unrushed, cell-deep, certainly not as an adult. And as a person with PTSD, I had completely lost any trust in my own emotions, fearing them constantly, sadness included — or perhaps especially, as it was the most persistent. Now, I was finally embracing it.

Which is how I could come to be in a position to miss it. The interestingness of it. The difference of it from other emotions. I remembered the sensations of it: the weight. The way it slowed things down and took the space of everything else up. It was exquisite, objectively but also as evidence that I could feel, that I was open and not shut down, capable of having a whole gamut of emotions rush in, and maybe overwhelm, but move through and move me. Not everyone can. Or does. I am occasionally jealous of people whose emotions come more softly, or quietly, or less often. I assume they have more time and energy, with those not being taken up by sensitivity that makes even the widely considered “good” emotions like joy feel like they’re making their heart explode. But for the most part, I’m not. Some people are born, and then they live, and then they die, one of my doctors told me once, in an effort to comfort. You, you die and are reborn sometimes 10 times in one day. Lucky.

The next time I felt sadness after I missed it, I was reminded why it was so hard to feel it all the time. Oh yeah, I remembered. It hurt. It was difficult to work. To cook, to eat, to play. To take care of others. Exquisite it may have been, but painful, and not invigorating, and quite tiring. Still I trusted that I needed it at that time, that it was expressing something necessary. I didn’t hate or judge it. I did not feel silly or weak. They say it takes a big man to cry, and I think — unfortunately, given our collective feelings about sadness — that’s true. But it takes a bigger woman still, to feel the strength of a sob, without apology or shame. With pride. I’m the biggest I’ve ever been, the way I let my emotions run, sadness included: the way it cleanses me, tears washing my face, resolving me to continue to feel with abandon.

***

Mac McClelland is the author of Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story (out this Tuesday, February 24th) and For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question. She has written for Reuters, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Association for Women in Communications. Her work has also been nominated for two National Magazine Awards for Feature Writing and has been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing 2011, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, and Best Business Writing 2013.

To learn more about Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story, click here.

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Flatiron Books

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/macmcclelland/not-feeling-sad-about-feeling-sad

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